The present invention relates to a Veloro.RTM. backed abrasive pad. More speoifioally, the present invention relates to a Velcro.RTM. backed abrasive pad which inoludes a tab portion for effectively removing the pad from the rotary tool without separating the Velcro.RTM. backing from the pad.
In the marble and stone finishing industry, it has been common in recent years to utilize Velcro.RTM. type fasteners for attaching abrasive pads to rotary tools utilized in the industry. Because of the pressures applied to these pads, during finishing of the marble or stone surfaces, the Velcro.RTM. attachments tend to become more heavily embedded into one another than the Velcro.RTM. is designed to accommodate. In the past, this has not generally been a problem since the pads utilized were generally torn up or otherwise expended by the time it was necessary to remove a pad from the rotary tool. Thus, destruction of a spent abrasive pad was not a problem in the past.
With the advent of new polymeric type pads or other pads, which can provide greatly increased wear over prior art pads, removal and reuse of the pad is common. Therefore, destruction of the pad during removal is undesirable. It has become a problem recently that because the Velcro.RTM. is adhesively applied to the backs of such pads and because of the increased adhesion between the Velcro.RTM. backing of the pad and the Velcro.RTM. of the rotary tool, the pad sometimes separates from the Velcro.RTM. backing during removal. This tends to ruin the pad at least for any continued normal use of the pad. Thus, while the pad has remaining useful life in its abrasive grit portion, the usefulness of the pad may be ruined if the adhesive between the backing of the pad and the Velcro.RTM. material is breached during removal of the pad from the rotary tool.
Therefore, it has been a goal in the art to provide a useful method or apparatus of removing a Velcro.RTM. backed pad from a rotary tool without breaching the adhesive bond between the pad and the Velcro.RTM. backing.